How not to Plan

APG Ltd

Description

In the sink or swim world of planners, strategists and their clients, now more than ever, there is a need for a practical handbook to guide us through all the main parts of the process. And thanks to Les Binet and Sarah Carter at Adam&eveDDB we now have just that. The original inspiration for the book was a set of articles that they wrote for Admap over 6 years. In these they set out to bust a lot of myths and nonsense that swirl around marketing and communications by using evidence-based approaches and interesting examples to make their points. We've been working with them to turn this treasure chest of wisdom into a practical guide. We've called it How Not To Plan in reference to its myth busting antecedents and in homage to an old but much loved set of essays published back in 1979 in an APG book called 'How to Plan Advertising'. The How Not to Plan of 2018 is a manageably sized handbook which leaves room for your scribbles and notes and can be read as a guide or used as a constant helpful reference point. It's loosely based on the Planning Cycle and is grouped into themes that are important at different stages in the process, covering everything from how to set objectives, the 4 Ps, research and analysis, to briefing, creative work and media and effectiveness At the end of each chapter you'll find a simple 2-minute check list for how to do it better, a short case study showing how it's done brilliantly, a space for your notes and further reading for the intellectually gifted

Sujets

• Marketing et communication
• Strategic management
• Advertising

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781789011852
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Thanks are due to Admap , where the articles in their original form were first published, and to WARC, who retains copyright to them as published in their original form






Copyright © 2018 APG Ltd

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 9781789011852

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd



Les and Sarah have debated, laughed, despaired and generally tried to get better at planning together for more than 30 years at 12 Bishops Bridge Road, London.

During this time, they’ve written more than 50 award-winning IPA Advertising Effectiveness papers, and been privileged to work alongside the best planners in the world.

This book is dedicated to you all. We stand on the shoulders of giants.



‘Always read
something that
will make you look
good if you die in
the middle of it’
PJ O’Rourke
FOREWORD
Planning is now over 50 years old, and it’s more diverse, more interesting and practised by more people than ever; so it’s timely that the APG should publish this excellent book by Les Binet and Sarah Carter.

Those of you who have been around for some, or even all, of the APG’s own life will be familiar with previous volumes published by the APG: the original ‘Blue Book’, called How to Plan Advertising , and its younger sibling, the ‘Red Book’, which for many years served as excellent reference and guidance.

Everything in our professional world moves so fast that we might now hesitate to publish an authoritative volume on the craft and practice of planning for fear of speedy obsolescence. But despite changing circumstances, there are eternal principles and rules, and ways of approaching problems that remain helpful – and we’re keen to uphold them. We think they will continue to guide planners, strategists, marketers and researchers for many years to come. And it is these principles and ideas that Les and Sarah have used to create this incisive ‘How To’, or rather, ‘How Not To’.

The eagle-eyed among you will already have observed the contrarian title. We like a bit of contrary thinking, but there is nothing irrelevant or out of place about the contents of this book. It’s meticulously researched and incredibly detailed about what to do, and what not to do, at the different stages of the planning process. It’s written with a lightness of touch and a sense of humour, and embellished with lots of relevant and interesting examples and charts.

We’ve designed the book with practicality in mind. You should be able to shove it in your bag and take it to a meeting, scrawl in your own ideas, make notes in it, and enjoy having it next to you on your desk.

So, for all of you, here’s your book. Enjoy it, savour it – and use it.

Sarah Newman
Director, APG
INTRODUCTION
To be honest, we’re not big fans of ‘business books’. Like you, no doubt, we have shelves full of them. Most we’ve not finished. Many we’ve not even started. None are actually used .

So, we’d like this book to be different.

We don’t want it to be clever. We just hope that it’s useful – on your desk, coffee-stained and well-thumbed.

This is not the complete ‘how to do it’ manual of planning – if ever there could be such a thing. Instead, it all started back in 2010 with a series of monthly articles we began writing for Admap . These were all loosely based on a myth-busting theme. But really, they were just a welcome outlet to vent our frustration at the bollocks we kept encountering on the planning frontline.

We thought we might run to a couple of years’ worth of articles. Six years later, we were still going strong…

As an industry, we celebrate and share the good stuff. Meanwhile, the ‘less said about that the better’ stuff is swept out of sight… for obvious reasons. But through writing these articles, we came to realise that we perhaps learn more from the myths, misunderstandings and screw-ups than from the successes. And so our articles started to become useful little summaries to answer questions from planners. And planners, in turn, found them good jumping-off points for client discussions on similar real-life issues.

So now with permission from Admap , and support from the APG, we’ve collated all 66 ‘how not to do it’ articles here. We’ve grouped them into nine chapters around the planning cycle. And we’ve added extra material: checklists, mini case studies, tools, charts and observations.

This is the little book we’d have liked on our desks when we started out some 30 years ago.

Hope it’s useful.

Les and Sarah
adam&eveDDB




1 SETTING OBJECTIVES
How not to make a plan
How not to define your competition
How not to think about loyalty
How not to ‘convert’ people
How not to deal with ‘alienation’

2 PRODUCT, PRICE AND PLACE
Brands can not live forever
How not to manage your product portfolio
How not to think about distribution
How not to change price

3 BRAND AND COMMUNICATION
How not to think about brand choice
How not to be interesting
Nonsense does not work
How not to be different
How not to get people thinking
How not to have a relationship with your customers
What not to say
How not to sell

4 RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
When not to be rigorous
How not to use focus groups
How not to think about ‘positive’ responses
Numbers do not lie
H ow not to see the wood for the trees
Big numbers can not fail to impress
How not to use correlations

5 TALKING AND THINKING ABOUT STRATEGY
How not to use evidence
Your brand is not like other brands
The past is not relevant
How not to harness our collective brainpower
How not to brainstorm
How not to choose words
How not to use the p-word
You do not need to spell it out
Words we can not do without

6 WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?
Your buyers are not my buyers
You’re no different
Older people are not big spenders
Grandparents don ’ t have potential
These are not the good old days
People no longer read books
The old stuff does not matter

7 BUDGETS AND MEDIA
Reach no longer matters
Waste is not good
Budgets do not matter
Tv is no longer effective

8 CREATIVE WORK
It’s the idea and not the execution that matters
If it’s not relevant, it can not be effective
We can not own that
Humour does not sell
Details do not matter
Music is not so important
How not to use real people
Imperfection is not attractive
How not to portray your target audience
Consistency no longer matters
Old ads do not work
Creativity and effectiveness do not go together

9 EFFECTIVENESS AND EVALUATION
You can never be too efficient
How not to improve effectiveness
How not to measure effectiveness
How not to prove that advertising works
Online, evaluation is no longer a problem
Online data has no limitations
Do not look back
Advertising is not a safe investment
There is no value in failure
A final word – art and not science



SETTING OBJECTIVES



‘If you don’t know
where you are
going, any road
will take you
there’
Lewis Carroll
ONE
INTRODUCTION
Effective communication starts with agreeing with your clients what it’s supposed to do.

This sounds simple. But so often, this stage is rushed, fudged, based on flawed thinking or skipped altogether. And then the consequences come back to bite us… How can we pre-test this ad if we’ve never agreed what it’s meant to do? How do we measure effectiveness if the available research can’t measure what the advertising was planned to do? Was ‘failure’ a result of advertising being flawed? Or did we just not spend enough money for enough people to see it?

In this first chapter, we look at how to get off to the right start; how to set sensible objectives; how to think through what your communication can do; and how it might realistically do this.

Should we focus on existing customers or new ones? Do we want more buying or more buyers? How much do we need to worry about alienating the buyers we have as we try to appeal to new ones?

All based on empirical knowledge and hard-earned experience, rather than wishful thinking, received wisdom or guesswork.
HOW NOT TO MAKE A PLAN
‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
We once received a brief for a famous brand that had lost its way. The brief stated the brand ambition as being to ‘Take the brand back to greatness’. Then it set an objective of adding 13 percentage points of penetrat